6 So you want to start a BBS? Page 1 So You Want to Start a BBS? by Jerry Shifrin SYSOP, East Coast Forth Board 703-442-8695, McLean, VA May 23, 1987 May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 2 1 Introduction I was asked about starting a BBS. Rather than give a short, private response, I thought I'd take the time to provide a more detailed description. First of all, it's almost impossible to overestimate the time needed to run a good BBS. A lot of time is spent on adminis- trative BS. Then there's the time you spend on managing files - which to keep, which to review/plug, which to trash. The largest chunk of time is spent on messages - answering questions (like this one), helping new callers, moderating threads and conferences, etc. In this paper I'll attempt to give you some idea of what you're letting yourself in for, but I'll probably overlook some of the areas which you'll need to know about. Don't worry, SYSOPs as a breed are very helpful and most will be happy to help you out with any other problems you run into. Feel free to ask your favorite SYSOP for help in any area. Since I use PCBoard (from Clark Development Company, Inc., P. O. Box 71365, Murray, Utah, 84107, 801-964-6692 (voice)), some of the following discussion is specific to that system, but most of the areas will be similar for whichever system you select. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 3 2 What's in it for me? The first question you should ask yourself is "why am I thinking about doing this?" Hopefully it's not to make money. You will surely end up paying more in terms of hardware, software, supplies, and telephone charges than you will ever take in from user donations. At best, you can hope to recover your operating expenses, but you should really write off your original outlay for equipment. Well, what else can you expect? Lots. If you provide a high- quality service and attract a good set of users, you will benefit from it in several ways: 1. Software - good users will reciprocate for their download activities by uploading other software they've come across while cruising the boards. Of course, you'll get a lot of junk, but you'll also get a number of good packages you'll enjoy using. 2. Information - BBS's have become the best place to share information about new hardware, software, vendors, books, etc. They are also the best place to get help with hardware or software problems. The spirit of sharing or, as the Capitol PC User's Group likes to describe it, "users helping users" is alive and thriving on the bulletin boards. 3. Friends and business contacts - it's not unusual for casual conversations on bulletin boards to develop into friendships, business arrangements, and sometimes even marriages. 4. Karma - call it what you like, but by offering a good bulletin board service, you're giving something back to the community which helped you along with free soft- ware, advice, etc. Without getting mystical about it, I firmly believe that there is a balance to the universe, or as the Beatles said, "the love you take is equal to the love you make." Or call it the Golden Rule. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 4 3 Hardware Well, let's go over some of this in a bit of detail. First of all, hardware. Naturally, you need at least a PC, monitor, hard disk, and modem. Don't assume you can just run the BBS when you're not using it - you really have to dedicate the hardware to the bulletin board, otherwise both you and your callers will get frustrated at the intermittent system availability. You really need at least a 20 megabyte hard disk. Your BBS software, utilities, message files and logs will easily consume 4-5 megs. You'll be surprised at how quickly the rest of it fills up with files for downloading. A larger disk minimizes the frequency of required maintenance cycles. (about $400 with controller card). I prefer a monochrome monitor. Since your system will mostly be showing text data, you'll find a monochrome monitor easier on your eyes as well as being less expensive (about $100-150). Of course, you need another PC for your own usage and for BBS maintenance. One alternative is to run on an AT class machine with two partitions (DoubleDOS, Taskview, or Desqview) and two monitors, but you should realize that having this type of complicated operating environment is much more fragile and will fail with certain ill-behaved software. I find it helpful to have both computers connected to a single printer via a printer switch (about $30-40). This allows me to print out some of the longer messages and refer to this listing when composing a response on the other computer. Obviously you also need a second phone line. It's helpful to also have a second modem - this way you can test changes to the board (e.g. doors, new BBS releases, utilities) without having to wait for someone to call in and try things out. I would suggest that for the BBS, you get the best modem you can afford. Many of the inexpensive modems which promise Hayes compatibility, really are not fully compatible and may not operate correctly when used for a BBS. Additionally, the more expensive modems have better equalization circuitry which will give your callers cleaner connections. Also, consider getting at least a 2400 bps modem - your users with faster modems will appreciate the greater throughput. I really can't recommend that you shell out for a 9600 bps modem yet - there are just too many incompatibilities among the high-speed modem vendors. You should probably consider adding an EMS card eventually. Whether you use it as a RAM disk or disk cache, it will provide a dramatic increase in system performance and save wear and tear on your hard disk. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 5 Oh yeah, you need disks -- lots of disks. You should have at least two sets of backup disks and alternate between them. Also, you'll want to periodically move some things offline: outdated or low-usage files, older messages, caller logs, etc. Naturally you could just trash this stuff, but I find it occasionally helpful to keep them available for reference. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 6 4 Utility software While none of this is required, you'll find that having the right tools will ease your workload and improve your system performance. For most of these there are public domain or shareware alternatives. In general, I prefer the commercial packages - you will be using these a lot and for most of them will require reasonable support and updates. 1. Backup utility - unless you can afford a tape drive ($500-1000), you really need a backup utility. I prefer Fastback (about $100). Another alternative is the DOS BACKUP program, but you'll find Fastback to be faster, more reliable, easier to use for both backup and restore, and able to put more data on a single floppy. Even if you can afford a tape drive, you might want to consider adding a second hard disk instead (about $300 assuming you put both disks on a single controller) and use it strictly for backups. This is a lot faster, but not quite as reliable since a huge power surge could easily wipe out both disks (not to mention a fire). 2. Cache utility - whether you have an EMS card or not, a cache utility will add a good deal to the performance of your system, especially with an EMS card. I use Vcache from Golden Bow Software (about $50). Other choices are Lightening and a few shareware offerings. 3. Disk organizer - with all of the disk activity to message bases, system logs, files, etc., eventually your hard disks will become hopelessly fragmented, increasing your system overhead. A disk organizer will defragment your files, minimizing disk arm movement. I use Vopt from Golden Bow Software (about $50). Other choices are the shareware program DOG and a program from Softlogic (whose name escapes me at the moment). 4. Disk Maintenance utility - considering that your system will be running night and day for months on end without interruption (hopefully), eventually you will have some disk problems. The right maintenance utility can some- times save you from having to do a full disk restore. I use PCTOOLS from Central Point Software (about $30), but a better choice might be the Mace Utilities (about $100). Another possibility is the Norton Utilities. 5. Editors - I'm sure you have your own favorites here, so whatever I say will be ignored, but I would suggest that you need two different editors - a full-function wordprocessor for composing lengthy messages, bulletins, etc. and a quick little editor for making little fixes to directories, configuration files, etc. I use Framework II from Ashton-Tate (about $400) for May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 7 the large stuff and QEDIT, shareware from Sammy Mitchel ($35) for all the little things. The nice thing about QEDIT is that it's real fast and doesn't require any other files for its operation. Also you can configure it to be similar to whatever other editor you're comfortable with. Of course, there are hundreds of alternatives. I'd really suggest that you not stint on these tools. It's like working on a car -- the right tool can turn a difficult task into a real breeze, and the less time you spend on maintenance the better. You'll have plenty of other things which will consume your time. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 8 5 Selecting a BBS package OK, we have the hardware, the phone line, and the utilities. Next we need to choose some BBS software. Assuming you're running an IBM PC or clone you have three main choices along with a number of less common alternatives. Tom Mack's RBBS-PC is the grandaddy of PC BBS's. It has numerous add-ons (utilities, doors), and may be the widest used (with PCBoard nipping at its heels). It's semi-public domain (free, no donation requested, but copyrighted). It suffers from the lack of control over its operation - most RBBS systems will differ in details of their operation and every caller has to learn each board's individual operation. FIDO is another widely used system and it features the ability to have national and international messages, conferences, and file transfer. Within each region there is a designated gateway node and all of the FIDO boards will contact their gateways in the middle of the night for message and file transfer. On the negative side, FIDO is slow and suffers from, I think, an awkward user interface. FIDO is also distributed as public domain (or share-ware, I forget). I use and (naturally) recommend PCBoard. It's considerably faster than the above two boards, features a simpler, single-level user interface. Also, to the best of my (limited) understanding it is much simpler to operate from the SYSOP's point of view than the other two. PCBoard is sold as a commercial product, costing between $100-200 depending on features (doors or networking support). For that price you also get some incredibly useful utilities and a year's maintenance via the authors' BBS ($50 for each following year). I can categorically state that the authors provide great support. My questions are answered quickly and my suggestions often show up as features in the next release. Also, Clark Development releases improved versions of PCBoard about every two or three months. I think it's somewhat like paying for the right tools. If PCBoard makes it easier to run your system, then the money you've paid will quickly be recovered in terms of your time-savings. Also, considering that this will account for 99% of your system usage, it's a small component of the total cost. All three of these packages have been around for a few years and show no signs of becoming unsupported orphans. Aside from these three there are several less-widely used alternatives - DBBS, Collie, Wildcat, and others, but I'm afraid I can't offer too much information on these (except that DBBS is real fast). May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 9 Since I really can't discuss the others, I'll assume you've chosen PCBoard, though most of what follows applies to every BBS - you have to deal with callers, files, and messages no matter what choice you've made. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 10 6 Getting Started You'll probably find it fairly easy to do the initial BBS setup. PCBoard comes with a couple of hundred pages of documentation which explains how to set up your modem, file directories, conferences, etc. You should be able to get going by just taking most of the defaults, though as you become familiar with all of the features you'll eventually want to start customizing things. I'd suggest avoiding things like doors, graphic displays, conferences, networks, timed-events, and the like until you become fairly comfortable with the system's operational characteristics. Start out small with a few directories and bulletins until you know where you want to go. There are a number of files you'll have to create to get going: 1. Welcome message - this is what your caller sees each time he or she calls your system (though it may be skipped). You should at least identify your system here. Some SYSOPs put incredible amounts of energy into designing flashy displays for these. I don't. 2. New user message - a file which is displayed to every new caller the first time they logon. This should provide them with a brief list of rules and let them know where to go for more information. 3. Level message - a unique file for each level of user you define for your system: unregistered, bad guy, registered, participating, contributing, visiting SYSOP, etc. You should let the user know where they are and what to do next (answer the questionnaire, upload files, etc.). 4. News - this is where you may put any daily news announcements (system going down for maintenance, important events, etc.). 5. Questionnaire - this file contains a list of questions which will be asked of your callers if they issue the [S]cript questionnaire command. Most SYSOPs use this for caller validation. 6. Bulletins - Here's where you may put all the detail information you want to make available: rules, helpful hints, system statistics, honor role of users, etc. Feel free to use any of the ECFB bulletins (with proper accreditation) you think worthwhile. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 11 Several of these are optional and there are a few additional files you may choose to provide: customized menus, additional questionnaires, goodbye message or questionnaire, additional versions of these files for each conference, graphics versions of these, etc. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 12 7 File Directories Naturally, a fair amount of your caller activity will be uploading and downloading files (mostly downloading). You should organize your files in a way which makes sense for your user community: helpful files for novices, disk utilities, communications, etc. You will probably find it helpful to set up a separate directory for each category. There are a number of utilities around which will help with this. The best of these come with PCBoard: PCBFiler. PCBFiler allows you distribute your uploaded files into the proper directories, maintain file lists, edit file names, file descriptions, etc. This program is worth the price of PCBoard all by itself. If you set things up properly you will find your file maintenance reduced to just a few minutes each week. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 13 8 Decisions, Decisions You have a number of decisions to make on how you will run your board. I can't begin to touch the surface of all these, but will describe a few of them. 1. Open or restricted access? - will you let anyone dial in and access all of your board's facilities (down- loads, messages, conferences, doors, etc.)? Or will you restrict access to those who have registered, answered a questionnaire, read your bulletins, mailed in a form, sent you a check, etc.? Many SYSOPs restrict downloads to those who have answered a questionnaire and been validated. A few go so far as to personally call each and every new user and chat with them before granting full access. I allow limited access until the caller completes a questionnaire. I apply a "sanity check" on their information (sometimes calling them if it looks suspicious) and then grant then full access. 2. Free or pay? - will you accept, request, or demand payment for use of the board? There are pros and cons to each of these alternatives. If you accept payments at all, then you are committing yourself to keeping the board available and probably allowing your paying callers to tie up your board without any other parti- cipation. Is it worth the $20 or so to you to have a paying caller logon every few days and do nothing but download? If you demand payment then you may be exclud- ing people who could possibly enrich your board in other ways. On the other hand, if your board is totally free and open, then you may find yourself swamped with people who do nothing but download. I would suggest that, until your board is fairly well established, you not insist on payment. You may wish to provide incentives for people to contribute money to your boards operation - special conferences or download directories, extra time, first crack at new files, etc. 3. Monitor downloads? - Many SYSOPs monitor upload to download ratios, at least for their non-paying callers. Typical is requiring at least one upload for each 10 or 20 downloads. A few SYSOPs are tougher, demanding 1:3 or 1:5 ratios. I guess the question is whether you're doing this in order to collect software or if you're trying to provide a public service. I'd suggest being fairly loose about this until you have established a good reputation for your board. 4. Games and pictures? - If you allow games and graphic pictures (known as Readmacs, often R-rated) on your board, then you will certainly get your share of May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 14 immature callers of all ages. On the other hand, games are a important part of most people's computer usage. What to do? What to do? Beats me. 5. 300 bps callers? - Many SYSOPs restrict 300 bps callers since they tend to be in the category of immature callers and they can't make as efficient use of your facilities as callers with faster modems. Again, by doing this you may deprive yourself of good, contribut- ing callers who happen to lack a faster modem. I allow 300 bps callers on the ECFB, but restrict their down- loading activities to the wee hours of the morning. 6. Operator page? - Do you want callers to be able to page you by sounding an alarm on the PC speaker? It's nice to be helpful to new callers, but I'm amazed at the number of people who feel free to page you in the middle of the night. If your PC will be located within hearing distance of your bedroom, I'd suggest you disallow the page bell, especially if you're married to someone like my wife, who's a light sleeper and doesn't like being awakened. Well there are hundreds of other decisions you'll have to make to set up your board, but this should give you some feel for the kind of stuff you're getting into. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 15 9 Maintenance 9.1 Daily You really need to check your board at least once a day. At first this might seem like fun, but after awhile it becomes a bit of a drag. 1. Message check - you really MUST read (at least scan) every message on your board. Your standards are your own, of course, but I'd suggest making sure that no one is promoting software piracy, phone phreaking, or whatever else you consider offensive. Some SYSOPs disallow bad language; I don't feel strongly about that, but don't want to have anyone leave abusive messages on the board. 2. Registration - you should promptly register new callers, especially if you require that they complete a questionnaire to gain access to your board. It's discouraging for someone to make several long-distance calls before they're allowed to read messages or download files. 3. File check - you should do at least a quick check of any uploaded files to ensure that people haven't uploaded commercial software. If possible, you should verify that the software isn't a "Trojan" or "worm". If you do this, try out new software on a system without hard disks (or one on which you can disable the hard disk). Also, there is some public domain software around which will attempt to discover or protect you from such software. Be especially careful with uploads from people you're not yet familiar with. 4. Respond to questions - your callers will really appreciate it if you're consistent in replying to their questions within a day or so. You must be responsive if you want to attract a good set of callers. 5. Defragment - I'd suggest that you run your defragmenter (disk optimizer, etc.) daily. It'll surely improve your overall system performance. I include Vopt as part of my AUTOEXEC.BAT. 6. Reboot - PCs have gotten a lot more reliable in the last few years, but I'd still encourage you to reboot on a daily basis; this way you'll be starting out each day with a clean slate. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 16 9.2 Weekly There are several maintenance activities which are needed every week or so. 1. File maintenance - distribute your uploaded files into their proper directories. If you use PCBFiler, this will only take a few minutes. Take the time to verify that you aren't keeping several copies of the same program with different names, or that you don't have out-of-date versions of a package. If you let file maintenance drag on for a month or so, you will find yourself faced with an almost insurmountable task. 2. Backups - it's a real drag, but you really should do full backups on a weekly basis. At the very least, you should back up your user directory and message bases. 3. Message cleanup - if you have an active message base, you should probably go though it once a week, deleting older or irrelevant messages. I usually protect the non-general interest messages (thank-yous, etc.) so that they're only visible by the intended recipient. Your other callers will appreciate not having to sit through this stuff. 9.3 Monthly You may need to do these things more or less frequently depending on your board's activity. 1. User maintenance - eventually your user directory will have a large number of entries for people who haven't called in quite a while. They may have lost interest, moved, or died. It doesn't matter. People who haven't called in a while should be purged from your user directory. I give unvalidated users (those who never completed the questionnaire) 30 days, 90 days for validated users, and 6 months or longer for those at higher levels. PCBoard includes SYSOP commands to help you with this. Also, you will probably wish to sort your user directory so that your best callers are at the top of the file (this will slightly speed up their logons). PCBoard comes with another excellent utility, PCBEdit, which lets you sort and edit your user directory. 2. Message base maintenance - you must periodically prune your message base of outdated or deleted messages. PCBoard has a maximum limit of 1000 messages per conference, but the larger the message base, the longer it will take your users to logon and switch confer- May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 17 ences. Fortunately there is a SYSOP command you can use to compress your message base. PCBoard will copy only the active messages to a new file and leave your old file available as a backup. I compress and save these backups on floppies. 3. Caller log - PCBoard produces a log of all significant caller activity (logons, uploads, downloads, messages, doors, etc.). For an active board this can easily grow quite large. You should probably start a new log at least once a month. Also you may wish to run your log through one of the analysis utilities (see below) which will create a system usage file you may wish to post as a bulletin. 4. Full backups - C'mon now - at least once a month! If you use Fastback it will only take a half-hour (and 40-50 diskettes) for a 20 meg backup. 9.4 More than monthly Here's a list of other things you'll want (or need) to do on a periodic basis: 1. Hardware maintenance - especially if you're a smoker, I'd suggest you give your machine a good cleaning every so often. I dust or clean all the exposed surfaces. Also, I vacuum around the keyboard, vents, etc. Clean your monitor! Dusty or greasy monitors will make it hard to read. 2. Software upgrades - you'll probably want to take advantage of the new features in upgrades to PCBoard and the various utilities. I'd suggest keeping copies of the previous versions until you've verified the correct operation of new releases in your environment. 4. Bulletin maintenance - you probably need to go through your bulletins periodically and verify that they're still accurate for your system. Of course, you may need to do this more frequently if you maintain bulletins of current events, software or magazine reviews, etc. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 18 10 Utilities There are a number of public-domain or shareware utilities around which will help you run a high-quality BBS operation. You can find these on most of the larger BBS's, especially those which have a SYSOP's conference. I couldn't hope to describe all of the available utilities (besides, it changes every week), but here's an idea of the type of stuff currently available. 1. PCBFiler - this one comes with PCBoard and was described previously. It helps you do file and directory maintenance in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it manually. Essential! 2. PCBEdit - also described previously, this is also distributed as part of PCBoard. It allows you to edit all of your user directory information. You may also use this to sort and print your user directory and adjust their access level based on upload/download ratios. 3. QNE - a nice little utility from Scott Pazur (of the Fleamarket BBS which gives you a fast, simple way of updating your PCBoard news file. 4. Arcvue, ARCDoor, PCBArc - doors which allow your users to inspect an archived file without having to first download them. I use Earl Beachler's Arcvue door since I support non-IBM PC callers and Arcvue allows them to extract files for subsequent download (in case their system doesn't support the ARC file format). 5. CALLSTAT - analyzes your caller's log and generates a file of interesting caller statistics (files most frequently downloaded, number of callers in various categories, bulletin/conference/door usage, etc. There are several utilities which provide this capability. This is the one I use. 6. PCBMSG, PCBMFIX - allows you to recover a damaged message base. PCBMFIX also allows you to edit portions of a message. Since I wrote PCBMSG I'm a bit partial to it. 7. PCBMT - selectively copies portions of a message base (based on message number, subject, protection, etc.) to an ASCII text file. Includes a utility to summarize all of the message subjects. Written by, ahem, myself. I use it to create files out of some of the more interesting message threads. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 19 8. File transfer doors - there are several utilities around which allow callers to transfer files using protocols not currently supported by PCBoard (e.g. Kermit, Zmodem, etc.). This doesn't begin to touch the surface. There are utilities around for viewing messages and callers logs, creating databases of your user's directory info, summarizing your questionnaires, doors for playing games, etc. It seems that many of the PCBoard SYSOPs are also programmers and it doesn't take much for them to generate new utilities based on real or perceived needs. May 24, 1987 So you want to start a BBS? Page 20 11 Where to go from here If, after all this, you're still convinced you want to start a BBS, I'd suggest you first decide which BBS system you'd like to run. If you don't know, then dial into a number of your local boards and decide which of these is easiest for you, as a user, to navigate. Whichever is easiest to use will probably also be easiest to operate. Performance is also of crucial importance. It's no fun to pay long-distance charges to use a slow board. The meter keeps on running, whether or not you're doing anything useful. Once you've settled on a system, establish contact with one of the larger boards in your area of that system. If the board is public domain or shareware, you'll probably be able to download it from there. Make sure the SYSOP understands what you're doing so that he or she will be more forgiving of the large amount of downloading you're about to do. PCBoard has a demo version available if you wish to check it out before shelling out your money. You may find it helpful to experiment with that (but it's really not suitable for operating an actual BBS). Now it's up to you! Just remember that a BBS without callers isn't very worthwhile. Be nice to them -- you'll reap dividends in the long run. It's up to you to provide an interesting and entertaining forum for people to visit. The files and messages are for their benefit, not for yours. Also keep in mind that every BBS started somewhere -- you'll make mistakes, but if you work at it, you'll end up with an operation you can be proud of. Finally, keep in mind that there are hundreds (thousands?) of other SYSOPs who have already gone through the hassle you've set out to deal with. The vast majority of these people will be happy, even eager, to help you along. Feel free to ask them how they've dealt with the problem with which you're struggling. You'll be amazed at just how helpful we can be. May 24, 1987